Local food freedom
By Steve Gibbs
WE HAD A MOST INVIGORATING WEEKEND. Susan and I attended the second annual Nevada County Sustainable Food and Farm Conference in Grass Valley. We spent two days growing. On Saturday we heard talks from four highly accomplished speakers in the food freedom movement — Patrick Holden, Nicolette Hahn Niman, Michael Ableman, and Joel Salatin — and on Sunday we attended workshops run by the same presenters. The Saturday events ran 10 hours. The two-day cost: $30.
Patrick Holden owns the longest established organic dairy in Wales with 70 head of Ayrshires. He’s biodynamic, a Rudy Steiner head. His farm is a unified organism, and as such is self-sustaining, creating its own food, flora and fertilizer. He led a discussion on how a farm could survive if the world around it went to hell.
You may know Nicolette Hahn Niman from her book, “The Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms.” Or you may have purchased a few cuts of their humanely raised, drug-free, on-line beef, pork, ham, burgers, franks, and sausages from Niman Ranch.
Nicolette first told the crowd of 400 about her experiences as an attorney for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s environmental group, the Waterkeeper. She was assigned to cover hog manure. It wasn’t the leafy green career she had imagined, being a vegetarian who had just sold her Michigan house, given away most of her possessions and moved to New York City.
However, when she got her first assignment, to investigate the hog CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) in the mid-west and North Carolina, she was hooked. When she saw and smelled the countless manure lagoons polluting rivers, water tables and air space; when she heard the horror stories of billions of animals being born, raised, and butchered indoors, packed together without regard for their natural instincts, that was when she realized this was the most important work she could be doing. She fought the pigs in the hog industry.
Michael Ableman is known for raising $1 million and building the Center for Urban Agriculture in Southern California, a massive farm that hosts 5,000 people a year for tours, classes, and festivals.
Now he runs Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island in Canada where he heads his new Center for Arts, Ecology, and Agriculture. He makes the lion’s share of his income selling produce at farmers’ markets. He gave some most excellent tips to vendors, like stomping on garlic in front of your booth.
The key presenter, the most familiar name, was Joel Salatin, a life-long farmer, author and activist whose fame spread when his Polyface Farm in Virginia appeared in the popular documentary, “Food, Inc.”
The camera gave Joel a chance to speak to millions, and people liked his message.
To paraphrase the way he put it this weekend, “The officials in charge of food are crazy and we have to resist them. They’ll break us and make us sick. We have to do what’s right about our food regardless of regulations.”
In one of his books, “Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front,” he gives a few examples. If a little girl decides to bake corn muffins and sell them at church, she’s breaking the law somewhere. If an apartment dweller makes excellent burritos in his kitchen and sells them to his neighbors, he’s in violation. If Polyface sells jelly from another farm, they’re in violation.
One time his poultry inspector retired and a new guy came in; suddenly everything that was once OK was now in violation. It took him and his family months, money, time and lawyers to end up winning on every point and returning to farming as usual. He felt harassed.
A prevailing concern felt by Salatin and many of the people in attendance is that there’s a silent war against sustainability because it results in reduced profit margins. People who take care of their needs in-house seldom shop; when they do shop, they buy from each other.
Politicians talk the good talk, but they continue to support restrictions preventing farmers from feeding people. They enforce expensive permits, inspections, and contracts required to do business. Fat companies can absorb the hit. It runs most small farmers into the ground they plow.
There is a movement afoot called Local Food Freedom that has helped 20 counties adopt food ordinances to protect their small farmers. One audience member stood up and urged attendees to converge on Placerville City Hall the following Tuesday to push for an El Dorado County food ordinance. Santa Cruz County was a recent success. Here is a quote from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund newsletter:
“On September 12 (2011) the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County, California adopted a ‘Resolution Recognizing the Rights of Individuals to Grow and Consume Their Own Food and to Enter into Private Contracts with Other Individuals to Board Animals for Food.’ The resolution was adopted in response to warning letters sent by county district attorneys and the California Department of Food and Agriculture to several California farmers operating shareholder dairies.”
Anyhow, Susan and I had a great time. We arrived on Friday night. When I ordered the tickets I informed promoters that I was coming as a journalist more than a farmer. Thus, we were invited to a private Friday gathering with the presenters and organizers.
We got to sit and chat at length, one to one. I asked everyone the same question: “Are we winning?”
Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald for 25 years.
